Partnerships play an important role in helping us green our cities.
We partner with organisations, local government and businesses to deliver healthier, happier and more resilient communities by making greener places and great public spaces.
Our partnerships are greening urban areas by:
Supporting tree-planting at public places, including schools and hospitals.
Encouraging innovative tree-planting practices to enhance urban tree canopy.
Helping inspire individuals to play a part and plant trees in their own backyard.
Bringing community together at tree-planting events.
Celebrating tree-planting contributions from private organisations.
Championing cross-government collaboration to green our cities.
Partnership programs
We have partnered with Greening Australia, Landcare NSW, Planet Ark, IndigiGrow and Bunnings Warehouse to help increase the tree canopy and green cover across our urban areas.
Programs made possible by working together:
- Nature in Cities – combining the Cooling the Schools and Rewilding Sydney programs - in partnership with Greening Australia.
- Creating Canopies 2020-25 in partnership with Landcare NSW.
- Proud category partner of Planet Ark's National Tree Day since 2020.
- Free tree giveaway.
Our partners
We're proud to partner with great organisations to create greener, more sustainable cities for all.
Between 2020 and 2025, the partnership with Landcare NSW and Greater Sydney Landcare delivered 309,637 trees at 216 sites across 21 local government areas of Greater Sydney with less than 30% canopy cover. Landcare NSW and Greater Sydney Landcare also delivered more than 200 community planting events, engaging over 5,000 volunteers in local tree planting activities.
Read the Creating Canopies plantings across Greater Sydney from 2020–2025. The Creating Canopies program 2020-2025 was designed to ensure trees planted by diverse communities would thrive, providing shade and creating important habitat for wildlife into the future.
The partnership with Greening Australia involves working with schools and communities to plant native trees and shrubs. Since 2020, over 287,000 plants have been established across 32 council areas, including more than 70,000 native trees and shrubs planted by students across 306 schools.
- 2020 to 2022: Greening Australia planted over 87,000 trees across Greater Sydney. This included about 64,000 trees at community events and 23,000 trees planted by more than 9,700 students across 130 schools. Curriculum‑aligned lesson plans were also delivered alongside tree planting.
- 2023 to 2025: The Nature in Cities, Sydney project – including Rewilding Sydney and Cooling the Schools – delivered over 215,000 plantings.
- Rewilding Sydney planted over 188,000 trees and understory plants, creating cooler, more biodiverse corridors.
- Cooling the Schools planted over 27,000 trees, with more than 10,000 students across 180 schools, alongside environmental and cultural learning opportunities.
- 2026 to 2029: The Cooling the Schools program has expanded to include the Hunter–Central Coast and Illawarra–Shoalhaven regions. It will support around 150 schools to establish native, shade focused gardens.
We are proud to be a Category Partner of Planet Ark's National Tree Day since 2020. This sponsorship recognises the close alignment between our objectives and those of the most recognised community tree-planting event in Australia.
In 2021 and 2022, we proudly partnered with IndigiGrow – an all - Aboriginal owned, staffed and run nursery in La Perouse for our free tree giveaway. IndigiGrow grows local native plants and bushfoods, which creates training and employment opportunities for young Aboriginal staff and provides a place for the community to connect with cultural knowledge.
Our partnership with IndigiGrow brought trees to 4,000 households in Greater Sydney.
In 2020 to 2022, we collaborated with Bunnings for our free tree giveaway, making free trees available to more than 25,000 households in Greater Sydney. The free tree giveaway helped inspire individuals to plant more trees in their own backyard to create more shade and cooler suburbs for everyone.
Greening milestones
Explore our partnership initiatives and see how we're creating a greener, more sustainable environment for everyone.
Cooler schools
Erskine Park High School was the 200th school to participate in the Cooling the Schools program. Students celebrated the milestone with a memorable morning of learning, tree planting and contributing to a greener future.
Since 2020, the program has planted more than 70,000 native trees and shrubs across 306 schools, benefiting almost 20,000 students in some of Greater Sydney’s hottest areas with cooler outdoor spaces and hands on learning opportunities.
This initiative not only cools urban areas but also educates students about the environmental and cultural benefits of planting native trees, urban cooling and biodiversity.
Due to the success of the program, in April 2026, the NSW Government invested more than $2 million to extend the program until the end of 2029 and bring it to schools outside of Greater Sydney, including 10 local government areas in the Hunter–Central Coast and Illawarra–Shoalhaven regions.
Trees planted with Landcare
A planting event at Campbelltown Hospital in September 2024 celebrated a major milestone for the partnership with Landcare NSW, with total plantings since 2020 surpassing 200,000 trees.
Canopy trees, such as eucalypts, were planted alongside a wide range of shrubs to boost biodiversity by attracting insects and native birds.
Partnership opportunities
If you are interested in partnership opportunities, email greeningourcity@planning.nsw.gov.au